LAS VEGAS -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used his Jan. 5
keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show to highlight the company's forays into
the consumer realm, including the Kinect hands-free controller for Xbox 360 and
Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft's product line is the result of "big technology
bets that we've made," Ballmer said, including "bets on the cloud" and "natural
user interface." Thanks to those innovations, he added, Kinect and the Xbox 360
are expanding from pure gaming platform to household entertainment hub,
integrating offerings such as Netflix and Hulu.

"As we speak today, millions of people are enjoying their
TV, their music and their movies on demand through Xbox Live," he said. In
coming months, Microsoft will roll out Avatar Kinect, which will allow users to
interact with others in virtual environments via gesture.

Although Ballmer's presentation focused primarily on
consumer innovations along the lines of smartphones and gaming, Microsoft has
already made some significant announcements in the opening hours of CES. Hours
before Ballmer's keynote, the company used a Jan. 5 press conference at the
Consumer Electronics Show to announce that the next version of Windows will
support System on a Chip (SoC) architecture, in particular ARM-based systems
from partners such as Qualcomm, Nvidia and Texas Instruments. ARM chip designs
dominate much of the burgeoning mobile market, which Microsoft is anxious to
penetrate.

Windows currently dominates the x86 platform used by
traditional PCs, but the rise of powerful mobile devices such as smartphones
and tablets -- powered largely by ARM chip designs -- has effectively created a whole
new market for the operating system, provided it can work out the engineering
details.

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